


Waiting for Deliverance

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky & Shuri BFFs, Everyone Needs A Hug, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 09:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15927374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: Shuri sits down hard on the floor, running her fingers along the working prototype for the sergeant’s arm. It’s the dull, flat black of unpolished vibranium, just the way her heart feels. There’s no gold patternwork to brighten it, the way his smile brightened his face.





	Waiting for Deliverance

**Author's Note:**

> Though this isn't part of a series, for me this was part of the same universe as [Anything To Make You Smile.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13854084)

“Thanks, Princess,” Bucky had said, picking up his weapons and gracing her with his smile as he left. “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

Shuri had stared at him, her brow wrinkling. “What in Bast’s name is a wooden nickel?” she had called after him. At his dry laugh she’d added, “And why should someone take one or not?”

He’d hefted his very large rifle over his shoulder. “Huh. Guess I never thought about it—something we grew up with. I really don’t know where it comes from. Sort of a warning not to get taken in.”

That didn’t clear anything up and she shook her head. The image before her from the kimoyo bead had blinked its alert and Bucky’s whole face brightened; she almost burst out laughing. “Your boyfriend is nearly here.” Shuri’d patted the shoulder of his new arm and reached up to muss his hair. He cleaned up very well. “It’s so fluffy I could die.” 

Those were such stupid last words to say to someone. 

Shuri sits down hard on the floor, running her fingers along the working prototype for the sergeant’s arm. It’s the dull, flat black of unpolished vibranium, just the way her heart feels. There’s no gold patternwork to brighten it, the way his smile brightened his face.

As dark as the world before Bast. 

She wipes the tears from her cheeks and breathes in and out in clusters, the way Okoye had made her do when Shuri’d found out about her brother, about Nakia, Ayo, Bucky, Sam...about trillions and trillions of beings throughout the universe she would never know but mourned all the same. Lifting the fingers of the prototype, she pushes hers between them. They’d run all kinds of dexterity modules in the testing phase, and Bucky had done that one day—threaded his fingers with hers and squeezed, thanking her for the hundredth time. Even though he’d said to keep the final version in the Design Group lab, just for a while yet, he’d always been happy to work on it—because he got to shower her and her brother with gratitude.

How many times had T’Challa waved his hands at Bucky, telling him it was all right, he wanted to help? He’d helped Bucky create the new tactical gear, procure his weapons—everyone forgot, now that he was king, how brilliant her brother was, as much as Shuri was, as their father had been. She could still hear T’Challa’s and Bucky’s voices down the corridor of the Great Hall, arguing about how much thanks was too much, like brothers themselves. It brings her a little smile now, which feels like an insult to their memory. But maybe they’re still giving each other a hard time in the other plane.

She starts to put the prototype back in its case, but stops when she feels a hand settle heavy on her shoulder. There hasn’t been anyone else here since Shuri made Dr. Matembu go home to be with her family, the vibranium mines are silent now, but it would take too much energy to be afraid and she has nothing left, not after days of chaos and triage and development work. They’re all running on fumes, as Bucky would say. A glance to her left shows her that it’s M’Baku, anyway, and she sighs. 

“Come, girl,” he says in the language of the Jabari, and Shuri bristles, shrugs away from his hand. He ignores it, his giant face and arms and hands with their dismissive gesture, and offers his hand to help her up. “You need your rest. And the palace needs you.”

“I’m eighteen, I’m not a _girl_ ,” she says and frowns at his hand. “And I have a mother, still, at least, so I have no need of another.” The queen has been in emergency councils these past days, with M’Baku and the other tribal leaders, the Avengers. The ones left, anyway. Otherwise Shuri might be with her, crying and holding on for life. The sun and the moon keep rising, but it’s too dark to see more than a few steps ahead, though she can’t tell her mother that. Not now. 

The side of his mouth tugs up and his eyes sparkle, he switches to isiXhosa. “You know your vocabulary well enough, but you don’t know the nuance.” They began learning the mountain tribe’s dialect after T’Challa convinced M’Baku to join the tribal council, but she’s not that good at it, she knows. She had no real use of it in Oakland. He shakes his hand and she rolls her eyes but takes it and lets him pull her up with his tremendous strength. Have they tried to convince him to become the new Black Panther yet? “It means ‘little sister,’ used that way.”

Shuri casts her eyes down, warmth on her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

“No apologies.” It goes unspoken that everyone is on edge, their skins are fragile and hearts weak. “The council has broken for a while, so they might have time to rest, too.” The captain had said things had broken down everywhere outside Wakanda, that the rest of the world was a mess. They had many days and nights ahead before they would know what the situation really looked like, because “they don’t handle things as well as you do here.” 

Bucky would always marvel at their technology, tell her how much he loved it here.

They need to see their loved ones, it’s true—everyone is afraid this might be only the beginning, that there’s still more loss to endure. M’Baku hasn’t allowed himself to go home yet, the Jabari lands are farther away and there is so much to do in the Golden City as it is. Okoye’s home at the border is closer, but she stays, too. They know full well, though, the toll Thanos’s madness took on their people. So many of M’Baku’s family are gone—two of his children, both his mother and father. “I don’t know why I am crying over this...thing,” Shuri says, thinking of his loss, hers.

He jerks a chin at the prototype. “You loved him. The White Wolf.” Like it’s that simple, and maybe it is. Bucky had remarked after meeting M’Baku that he was terrifying, and the face her brother had made was beyond price. “We know,” they’d both said and laughed, “we know.” But he’s a good man.

“Yes. I suppose so.” She thinks of all the stories Bucky told her from life in America almost a century ago, a world away in Brooklyn, about the captain as a child; recalls his advice before her first stay in Oakland. How much he’d loved trading information with her, learning their technology, culture, language in return. Sometimes you didn’t appreciate things until you saw them through the eyes of an outsider, and she’d loved her home even more. 

“Any more work can wait until tomorrow,” M’Baku says. “The lab will be fine.” But she shakes her head. There’s still so much to do. Things she hasn’t even imagined yet that could help, that could—

Behind M’Baku, in the entrance that curves around into her modeling room, the captain appears. The light from the floor makes his dark, dirty uniform shimmer, amplifies the heavy, dark circles under his eyes. They haven’t had much time to talk, really, as he and the Avengers ran all over the city during triage and he's been constantly making calls everywhere in the world or in meetings. 

“Ah, reinforcements!” M’Baku says, his deep chuckle lightening his words. They clasp arms and give each other manly little nods, and she rolls her eyes. Her brother had changed so much after their father died, after what happened with N’Jadaka and W’Kabi, and his friendships with Captain Rogers, Bucky, and M’Baku showed that more than anything—they were each so different from him, yet they'd made such strong bonds. T’Challa could not be consoled at having to put W’Kabi in custody; what would he have done without Nakia in these dark days, and his new friends? She hopes that they’re together, with their ancestors, putting their heads together to figure out a solution. To conceive of anything else is...

“I promised the queen _and_ the general that if Lord M’Baku didn’t return right away, I’d back him up and bring you to the Royal Palace myself.” He smiles, though it’s weak and watery, nothing like she has ever seen from him before. Once, Shuri and T’Challa had walked out to the lake village when the captain had come to visit, to show him where Bucky was staying. Bucky had rooms on the grounds of the Royal Palace, but he loved the children in the village and had taken to helping them with their duties: tending the goats and cows, planting, harvesting. The look on the captain’s face when he saw Bucky reminded her of how Father had looked at Mother, how her brother looked at Nakia. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted for Bucky since the war,” he’d said to her, his voice trembling with emotion. “To have this kind of peace.” And then they’d gone and taken it away from him, and Shuri was so glad she hadn’t been the one to bring the arm to Bucky that day. 

“There’s too much to do,” Shuri says, glancing around the room. “Dr. Matembu left the”—she waves a hand over toward the medical area, not finding the words in English all of a sudden—“also there is Oakland, it is a shambles. And we must find a way to repair Thor’s axe if he’s to seek the Asgardians, though I don’t know—as well, we must figure out how to contact Mr. Stark to see—”

“Mr. Stark and Thor can wait, Your Highness,” Captain Rogers says gently. “Oakland can wait.” She huffs. “If you push yourself too far—”

“If my brother were alive, he would not rest. I cannot, either.”

M’Baku and the captain share a look, some communication she doesn’t understand, and it makes her so angry she kicks the prototype case so hard it sails under the desks and crashes against the wall. “I’m not a child.” M’Baku’s perfectly sculpted brow shoots up as if to say _oh really?_

“Little sister,” he says in Xhosa, and puts his hand to her cheek. “I’m going home for a few days to tend to things. When I return, I want to see you rested. Take care of your mother, and let her take care of you.”

She nods, grudgingly.

When he’s left, Shuri turns to Captain Rogers, because he would understand. Bucky told her many stories of how stubborn he is, that he defies orders and follows his own rules. “Captain—”

“How many times do I have to tell you it’s _Steve_? I’m not a captain of anything anymore.” His smile is achingly sad.

“Says the man who calls me _Highness_.” They look at each other, defeated. Shuri hadn’t realized before how weary he is: his eyes are bloodshot, his hair dirty and lank, the red soil of Wakanda is ground into his uniform. They must get him some clean clothes, he must rest. 

_Ah._

Dropping her head, Shuri closes her eyes. “Steve.” A little of his light returns at that. “I’m afraid if I leave here...”

“I know. But we still don’t know what we’re looking at. We’re still in crisis mode—that won’t end for a while, but we can plan later. We can do more later. With your technology and Thor’s knowledge, maybe we’ll come up with something.” He moves close to her and holds out a hand. “Bucky’d kick my ass six ways to Sunday if I didn’t take care of his Wakandan friends.”

She remembered showing the captain—Steve—how to use the kimoyo beads to speak to Bucky while they were away from each other, that they could see one another’s three-dimensional images with the beads and talk, better than Skype. “Oh, so we can see—” and he’d frozen in embarrassment at the thoughts rushing through his mind, blushing all the way down below the collar of his T-shirt. While she’d teased them mercilessly after that, she’d always liked that they weren’t just a couple, but obviously best friends. She liked that they’d known each other so well, were at such ease.

“Did he—was he—was there pain?” When Shuri had woken up on the floor of the lab, her head aching from the blow that alien had given her, there were no screams, no shouts. No people around her. Only confused voices from the battlefield trailing off, Okoye’s soft wail, Captain Rogers’s quiet “oh God.” 

Steve tilts his head sideways, unsure if she’s asking about her brother or Bucky, but she can’t quite look him in the eyes. His voice quivers. “I don’t know. I think they felt it, but I don’t think it hurt.” At least he’s honest with her. 

Eventually, Shuri raises her eyes and looks at him, and seeing the tears streaking his pale skin loosens her own tears and she begins to sob uncontrollably, great wracking breaths that make her body roll and tremble, and the tears run under her collar. She puts her hands to her mouth but it won’t stop, her legs buckling under her. Steve catches her under the arms and pulls her to him, his fingers clutching the fabric at her back. 

She cries for her father and her brother and her friends, for the Wakandans and the Avengers and the Asgardians, for the world, for the universe. They stand that way until her voice is worn raw from her sobs, till his own tears have stopped, and he picks her up to carry her back to her mother and Okoye. 

Outside, it’s dark already, and Shuri rolls a bead forward to light their way, putting a hand where the star used to be on his chest. She closes her damp eyes and leans into the captain’s shoulder, and asks, “Tell me something—what on earth is a wooden nickel?”

**Author's Note:**

> I think of the triage and crisis management as being handled pretty much like dira sudis described so well in [The Way We Are Tied In](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14798283).
> 
> On [tumblr](http://teatotally.tumblr.com/post/177855306240/new-fic-waiting-for-deliverance).


End file.
